Is S.A. still too dependent on military jobs?

And there is a cautionary tale here for San Antonio. Any city, really. It's about the perils of putting economic eggs in too few baskets.

It's been a long slog for San Bernardino. The coup de grace is the current economic morass that has put a substantial number of the city's homeowners underwater. Many have lost homes altogether.

In my family's social circles, if you were financially comfortable by working-class standards, that generally meant your dad toiled at Santa Fe railroad, Kaiser Steel or Norton AFB — on a high school education or less.

My dad, a tailor, didn't work for any of those.

Norton loomed large for me because a beloved uncle, Angel, worked there. His family seemed rich to me. They weren't, but they had a spacious home, multiple cars and, gasp, color television.

My uncle retired with a comfortable pension, I think, before the base closed. But timing was not so good for others. When I returned to my hometown a second time in my career to work for the newspaper there in the late '90s, Norton, Kaiser and Santa Fe were all gone.

And San Bernardino, a working-class town that never was considered a Southern Californian gem except by those of us from there, was getting a reputation as gritty and even dangerous.

This was a jolt. San Bernardino had its problems when I was a kid but I had mostly an idyllic youth, though the town's perpetually dirty air back then still is etched in memory — and likely in my lungs, too.

Norton closed in 1994, preceded by Kaiser Steel and Santa Fe. It was devastating. The base was such a major part of the city's economy — in retrospect, too large a part.

There was warning. Norton went on the closure list in 1989. And no doubt there were fevered efforts to prevent the closure even if the process is supposed to be immune to such pressures.

Now consider: In 2006, the economic impact of the military in San Antonio was $13.2 billion, a figure surely higher today because the area's bases actually picked up missions from a round of base closures in '05. A more current study is pending. But that older study said this spending “generates the highest earnings of all industries in San Antonio.”

San Antonio's bases certainly can make the case that they are vital. But automatic cuts threaten because of a partisan game of chicken on taxes in Congress. Some 160,000 jobs reportedly are at risk in Texas, likely a number of them in San Antonio.

The insanity of this game of chicken aside, here's a heretical question for elected officials in Military City USA.

Yes, we're fortunate to have the military and should nurture the relationship, but is it still too big a share of San Antonio's economy?

Yes, there have been notable gains in diversifying the economy, helped along lately by Eagle Ford oil production and other industries. But are the gains enough? Are the efforts urgent enough? Given the concern every closure process spurs here, the answer would seem to be that the loss of bases or missions still is viewed as highly damaging.

Kelly AFB closed and San Antonio absorbed the loss. Kelly was transformed and still contributes economically. And San Antonio picked up other military duties at other bases. But can San Antonio bank on the same confluence of events?

I've seen the pain when a city is too dependent on military jobs and they go away.